A Stream of Consciousness: My immediate thoughts on the massacre in my hometown, El Paso, TX.
- Aylee Safabakhsh
- Aug 28, 2019
- 4 min read
I don’t want to say that I am stunned. Stunned implies that I’ve gone silent, unable to comprehend what I’ve been taking in. I can say that I felt that at first, but grief has its stages. No, now, I’m at the point where I feel pressure. Pressure in the sense where when I move my head, I feel clouds. Pressure, where, when I open my eyes, the light becomes too unbearable and I must close them. Pressure, where, when I open my mouth to tell my mother, “Mommy, I’m scared”, the words never surface. I feel pressure in the sense that I cannot verbalize my concern, I cannot quantify how I feel on any measurable scale.
The morning of August 3rd 2019, I woke up as if it were any other day. I’m sure that people in my community were under the impression that August 3rd would come and go just as any other day, as well. What had come to ensue had been the most horrific, numbing, pressurized 12 hours and counting that I, and many others like myself, had ever experienced. I first saw the news as a tweet, “Active Shooter rumored to be at Walmart, near Cielo Vista Mall. Please be careful!” I was still groggy from my sleep, my eyelids were heavy, and I cautiously sent it to my sister. Sometimes these things aren’t real, they’re just created to cause hysteria of innocent people. About 5 minutes later, I get a FaceTime call: Mom, it read. I answered the phone enthusiastically, I love my mother. She carefully explained to me that the active shooter threat was real, and it was happening in my hometown. Within minutes, 20 people will have died, and 26 more will have been injured. I sat on my bed, 689 miles away from my family, as they were just minutes away from what played out to be one of the deadliest days in Texas history.
I didn’t start crying until my sister said something very simple to me. Very ordinary. “Dashi and I were there yesterday.” And then it hit me. The intensity of the situation dawned on me. The pressure of the moment lodged itself between my temples, and pushed, and pushed, until a steady stream of unforgiving, salty tears flooded my face. If this tragedy had happened one day earlier, I would have lost my siblings. I would have lost my two best friends, two of the people who mean the absolute world to me. I had the luxury of keeping them, 20 families did not.
Hour after hour, I sat in my room, I stayed on FaceTime with my family, constantly checking the news on my laptop, broadcasting CNN, and refreshing my Twitter timeline to even get a quick glance at what could have happened. I sat on FaceTime for 4 hours and 26 minutes, crying endlessly. It all escalated when my mom told me one of her best friends was inside the Walmart as the massacre happened. It was an anomaly for her to be at this particular Walmart, but since it was convenient, she stopped in, unassuming of the events to unfold.
It hurts when it’s people you know. It hurts when it’s the community you grew up in. It hurts when a city is as tight knit and loving as El Paso is. It hurts when you see the rankings of the safest cities and towns in America, and El Paso has consistently topped the charts.
What hurts the most though, is knowing that the creature that undertook this heinous act, was not an El Pasoan. This man, a 21 year-old DOMESTIC TERRORIST drove over 600 miles, drove over 8 hours to come into our city. He came into where our community is, and relentlessly killed. He came to kill us. He came to kill our people. My people. El Paso is many things, but it is not hatred. El Paso is love. El Paso is a tight-knit, hardworking community of loving individuals and families who do not condone nor support this chaotic agenda of racism, xenophobia, and fear-mongering of immigrants. An American murdered 20 innocent people this morning. My heart hurts for every individual resting in heaven, for every family separated, for every friend of a friend of a friend who was affected.
Hate will not drive our community apart, but it will bind it together, and we will rise stronger than ever before. No dejaremos que prevalezca el odio. Estoy increíblemente orgulloso de esta comunidad y de todo lo que representamos. El Paso es fuerte. El Paso es familia. Please, hug your loved ones, as I cannot do so tonight. Cherish your moments with them, as 20 people are robbed of those moments forever. Tomorrow is not promised, live each day to the fullest, and live your life through love.
A quick note: On the day of publishing, it has been 3 1/2 weeks since the shooting. Not a single day goes by where I do not think about this act of hate towards my community. Not a single day goes by where I am not grateful for this life. This post was intentionally made very emotional, and I will never change it. It did not take the El Paso shooting for me to start talking about gun control and reasonable policy, but it took this shooting for many others to start listening. If not now, then when? Gun control. Now.
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